College Adventures: Tough Decisions

Hello there!

Do you remember me?  I definitely haven't been much of a presence on this blog, but trust me, I still receive your comments and I'm still lurking in the shadows.

Life has been incredibly busy here.  I have finals on the 19th and 20th of December, I've been struggling to make my Christmas plans work (it's been complicated because of my job), and I've kind of been having a bit of a mental break-down because of all of these things happening at once.  I have called my boyfriend in tears as well as my own mother.  I almost cried in front of my boss due to frustration.  I have woken up in the middle of the night after a few hours of restless dreaming and I've just wanted to cry.

I don't think I've ever felt this way or come this close to an actual break-down.

Perhaps it's poor timing, perhaps it's a lack of communication from a variety of parties, perhaps it's my own inability to set limits for myself.

With the New Year and a new semester coming up, I think it's time to at least consider a change.  It's definitely a pre-meditated change, a week or two in the making, but I think it's a step that I must make in order to keep my sanity and do my very best in school, because school is my priority at this point in my life.

I love having a job and the place where I work is, for the most part, pretty great.  There are a few problems that I have with it, but it's very much related to being a full-time undergraduate student.  I won't go into detail about that here though.  Besides these problems, I'm having trouble balancing everything.  I have been procrastinating more than I usually do (doing things the day of as opposed to a night or two before the due-date) and because of this, I feel like I'm not doing as well of a job as I know that I am capable of doing.

These things are the most critical parts of my decision, but then I thought of this: I am also missing out on many, many experiences in college.  I have a friend that has asked me on several occasions if I would go swing dancing with her, but I've always had to say no because I work on the days this usually takes place.  I want to be able to say "Yes!!" for once.  Not only this, but I don't think I've been able to foster my friendships very well.  I have met so many wonderful people, but I haven't been able to make memories with them or get to know them better because I'm never around.

So I have to make some tough decisions.  I think that no matter what my decision ultimately is that I can make it work and it will be very beneficial to me.  I need to learn to accept that I cannot make everyone happy at the same time and I need to learn what my limits are.  I need to learn more about sacrifice and compromise.  I need to learn how to be more assertive (I've been very bad at that and that's a big reason why I've gotten myself into this predicament).

If you'd like to share, what are some difficult decisions that you've had to make?  How did you come to a conclusion for your problem?  How did you go about acting on this decision?  I could use all the help I can get...

Thank you for reading!  I will try to post more reviews soon.  After finals are over, I will have a lot more time to just sit and read.

--Jude